ctically completed before Sir William Dawson's retirement, but it
was not formally opened until October, 1893. In the last four years of
the Principalship of Dr. Dawson the University was given more than a
million and a half of dollars for endowment and equipment. What
gratified him most in receiving this amount was the fact that it
included many minor gifts which testified, at the close of his long
career, to the good will and confidence and co-operation of the general
public.

As a result of Sir William Dawson's constant anxieties and strenuous
labours, his health had been for some time in a precarious state. In his
annual University Lecture ten years before, he had said, "My connection
with this University for the past twenty-eight years has been fraught
with that happiness which results from the consciousness of effort in a
worthy cause, and from association with such noble and self-sacrificing
men as those who have built up McGill College. But it has been filled
with anxieties and cares and with continuous and almost unremitting
labour on the details of which I need not now dwell." Ten years had
passed since then, and the "anxieties and cares and unremitting labour"
to which he referred had not grown less. They had finally broken his
already weakened strength. On the 26th of May, 1893, after thirty-eight
years of arduous service, he tendered his resignation of the
Principalship of McGill to the Board of Governors, and reluctantly it
was accepted. After his retirement his interest in the University did
not diminish. He continued his researches and his writings. There was a
last visit to England in the summer of 1896, to attend meetings of the
Evangelical Alliance, the Royal Society, the Victoria Institute, the
Geological Society, and the British Association, at the latter of which
he illustrated to a large meeting of eminent geologists the structure of
_Eozoon_. In the summer of 1897 he was stricken with partial paralysis
from which he recovered somewhat, but which left him an invalid. Two
years later, in the autumn of 1899, his illness became acute. He lapsed
into partial unconsciousness. For several days he lingered. Then on
November 19th, a gray Sunday morning, very quietly at the last, he
slipped away. The next day, the Governors, Principal, members of the
teaching staff, and students gathered in the Molson Hall to do honour in
a Memorial Service, to the memory of the teacher, the administrator and
the man they